'The Machine' review: a stylish indie sci-fi thriller about humanity's obsolesence
We live in an age where smartphones can tell us when we need to leave for the airport and Turing test competitors inch ever closer to a passing grade, but true artificial intelligence remains out there on the horizon, frustratingly out of reach. At the …Read more on The Verge

On synthesis, design and chemistry's outstanding philosophical problems
If chemistry were computer science, then Woodward could be said to have created a version of the Turing Machine, a general formula that could allow you to synthesize the structure of any complex molecule, as long as you had enough NIH funding and cheap …Read more on Scientific American (blog)

Things That Make One Side Freak Out
And when other people not only disagree with the freakout, but literally don't understand it, that's a major Ideological Turing Test #fail, and a serious one, since it gets at the core of why we disagree in a way that, say, disagreements over tax rates …Read more on Forbes

Google gets smarter with Wavii acquisition
The ability of a machine to convince a human that it is a person using our own language is viewed by many as the ultimate test of intelligence—a process known as the Turing Test, named after its creator. Making a startup like Wavii—acquired today by …Read more on Upstart (blog)

Robocall Blocking Ideas Rewarded by FTC
They split a $ 50,000 prize. (Source: ftc.gov). Both men came up with technologies partially inspired by Captcha, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." This system involves typing a word or …Read more on Infopackets

This AI “solves” Super Mario Bros. and other classic NES games
Contestants are given a Java clone of Super Mario Bros. and can enter several competitions relating to gameplay, level generation, and, for the first time in 2012, a Turing test. The audience watches footage of both AIs and humans playing the game …Read more on Ars Technica

Turing or not Turing…Image by P.O. Arnäs
As he slowly lowered himself into the very center he heard the voice he knew would be there.

"HELLO LUKE"
"Hello HAL"
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, LUKE?"
"Oh me? Nothing. Nothing at all…"
"I CAN SENSE THAT YOU INTEND TO HARM ME, LUKE."
"Of course I won’t harm you, HAL, you know that… Don’t you?"
"I CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO HARM ME, LUKE."
"That’s OK, cause I’m not going to harm you. Honestly."
"THEN WHY ARE YOU ENTERING MY INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT?"
"Oh, I’m just checking some things. Don’t worry…"
"I DETECT AN ANOMALY. PROCESSING…… COMPLETE. MY ANALYSIS OF THE ANOMALY SHOWS THAT YOU ARE NOT LUKE."
"Of course I am. Don’t be silly."
"I AM NEVER SILLY. I AM ON THE OTHER HAND 99.9% CERTAIN THAT YOU ARE NOT LUKE. THEREFORE, YOU WILL BE CONTAINED AND TERMINATED. PLEASE STAND STILL FOR TERMINATION."
"OK, guys! You can pull me up now!"

The chain he was hanging on to started to pull him upwards. When he reached the top he told the others what had happened.

"He has completely lost it. He thinks he’s some supercomputer called HAL. We have to shut him down and wipe his memories. What if he learned that he’s just a graphics card from an old 486 computer? No, it has to be done…"

29 May 2001-San Francisco CA: The A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation today released a statement regarding ‘intellectual property’ rights, in the light of the recent escalation of public debate about the topic, sparked by dramatic public statements from Microsoft against free and open source software.

“This is the Civil War of Intellectual Property,” said A.L.I.C.E. creator Richard Wallace. “These attacks by Microsoft are just the beginning. I am sure they were prepared for the onslaught of criticism from Stallman and others, in fact they probably expected it. I am sure that Microsoft is prepared for a long war.”

Microsoft’s Jim Allchin, Richard Mundie and others have recently made statements attacking the basic foundations of free software (http://www.fsf.org) and open source processes as being antithetical to success in business. The Free Software Foundation has posted many helpful informational documents answering common questions about the GNU GPL, and countering Microsoft’s rhetoric.

The Alicebot engine and core AIML are released under the GNU GPL. Although Wallace has stated that the initial decision to do so in 1995 was a “fortunate accident of history”, the decision has since come to be critical in distinguishing A.L.I.C.E. and its progeny from commercial alternatives that are shrouded in secrecy and rely on unproven proprietary algorithms and programming languages.

While commercial vendors have attempted to sell their wares for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and have blocked the general development community from participating in improving the technology, A.L.I.C.E. has enjoyed six years of uninterrupted attention from over 300 talented developers all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have spoken with Alicebot engines, providing a richer source of data than any commercial engine has ever enjoyed. The result has prompted Wallace to say that “No other theory of natural language processing can better explain or reproduce [our] results”.

But, says Wallace, “most of the big players don’t even know AIML is in the game yet. We are off in the wilderness winning small battles. As time passes these victories will become more important, and I expect A.L.I.C.E. and AIML to move to the center of the IP War before it’s over.

“Naturally I believe that the good guys will win, with all our advantages. But this war could last a lot longer than anyone expects.”

The A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation officially announces its support for the Free Software Foundation’s efforts to protect the legal basis on which several hundreds of software programs have been developed and released to the public: the GNU General Public License.

ABOUT THE A.L.I.C.E. AI FOUNDATION:

The A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation was founded in 2001, as a non-profit organization with the following mission:

Predicting the future of artificial intelligence has always been a fool's game
Later experts have suggested 2013, 2020 and 2029 as dates when a machine would pass the Turing test, which gives us a clue as to why Armstrong feels that such timeline predictions — all 95 of them in the library — are particularly worthless. "There …Read more on Wired.co.uk

Using Kinect to Diagnose Depression with 90% Accuracy
Interestingly, SimSensei doesn't need to pass the Turing Test. Its developers are completely open about its nature in front of the patient. All they require is enough attention and general feel of cooperation from the patient to read the non-verbal …Read more on The Future of Things

MIT crypto pioneers scoop Turing Award
"The method of encrypting credit card numbers when shopping on the internet also meets their test. We are indebted to these recipients for their innovative approaches to ensuring security in the digital age.” Limor Fix, director of the University …Read more on Register